


The Velocity of Love

by Kleenexwoman



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Multi, Road Trip, Songfic, everyone is dressed cute, napoleon backstory and motivation, stuff I write when I'm sad, vegas baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-15 00:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4585461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My friends are all fucked up<br/>We ended up flipping out, smashing glass, grasping hands, biting lips<br/>Falling hard into<br/>The Velocity of Love </p><p>If a fight is what you want you’ll get it<br/>If money is all you want, then money’s all you’ll get<br/>I’d rather be drunk and in love"<br/>--Jack Terricloth</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cats Are Not Lucky Creatures

**Author's Note:**

> All songs are from the World Inferno/Friendship Society. 
> 
> This chapter contains cat violence.
> 
> "I want to tell you about crisis after crisis  
> But I hate to bore you so I swished my tail  
> About and my snout in indignation  
> And I landed, and I landed on my feet
> 
> We got our dignity, we fought for that  
> Yeah, but there's no money, there's time for that  
> Never worried about my belly, there's rats for that  
> Never worried about the future 'cause I'm a cat"  
> \--"Cats Are Not Lucky Creatures"

When his mother had her parties, Illya would climb out of his bedroom window and sit on the roof. He remembered her crying when his father was taken away, remembered her telling him that they would have to give up their little house in Kiev. They hadn't had to give up the house. He would have rather had his father back than the house, but he was not allowed to make that choice. 

He heard his mother laughing, and other men who were not his father laughing. The bottom of his stomach burned and twisted, acid energy flooding his body, the edges of his vision going red. He started punching the wall until the day he put a hole in it, and then he started punching the pillow until the day he tore it to shreds, and then he ripped paper, but his mother scolded him for that because paper did not come cheap these days and it was wasteful and anti-Party to do such a thing. 

So it was up the roof to look at the stars and try to block out the sounds of his mother and her friends laughing, her friends who used to be his father's friends and were now laughing while his father was in Siberia. His father was freezing to death, starving, while everyone else laughed and laughed and drank Stolichnaya and Pepsi-Cola. 

The night the weather turned, Illya went out on the roof without a jacket and watched the vapor of his breath rise up to the stars and he wondered how long it would take for his mother to notice he was missing. Would she find him before he froze to death in the cold Kiev winter? His fingers went numb and so did the tips of his ears, and he thought about his mother inviting her friends back to the house after his funeral, drinking Stolichnaya and Pepsi-Cola and laughing and not having to worry about her son hearing anything. 

He heard a soft crying sound, and something warm and soft nosed his palm. It was skinny, and it looked like it might be orange, but in the moonlight it was hard to tell. It tapped his leg with its paw, and then hopped into his lap and curled up. 

"Hello, kot," he said to it. At least someone out there cared if he froze to death, even if that someone was only a little orange cat. 

Illya took to sneaking downstairs and stealing caviar on a cracker for Kot. He had never liked caviar much, finding it too fishy and unpleasant, but Kot hunched over the cracker and gobbled the fish eggs down. After Kot ate, it would curl up in Illya's lap and he would stroke its head, or it would sit alertly next to him and they would watch the lights of Kiev together. 

"Do you have a mother?" Illya asked Kot. 

"Prr," Kot said. 

"I have heard that cats are not good mothers," Illya said to Kot. "Did you like your mother? Did she love you?" 

"Mrr." Kot bumped its head against Illya's hand, and he stroked it under the chin. It stretched its head out and closed its eyes, rumbling deep in its chest. 

"I don't know if my mother really loved my father," Illya said. "Did you know your father? Cats don't really have fathers, do they?" 

"Prrt." Kot's tail swished back and forth lazily, and landed on Illya's wrist. 

"I will be your father," Illya said to Kot. He wiped off a few stray fish eggs that still clung to the cracker and offered his fingertip to Kot, who gently licked it clean. 

After an hour or two, Kot would clean its face and slink off into the night, and Illya would go back to his room and not punch anything. If his mother had secret friends, then Illya had a secret friend too. And it was wasteful and anti-Party to feed good Russian caviar to a cat, but Illya didn't care. 

It was spring when Kot came to Illya and dropped a soft bundle of something warm and wet in his lap. Kot sat in front of him, tail curled around its legs, and looked at him expectantly.  
"Oh no," said Illya, and jerked his hand away from the bundle of feathers and slick, tacky blood. It had been a little brown bird with a breast that was speckled black and white, and now its wings were limp and one leg was torn off. There were bite marks on its throat. 

He took the bird and threw it as far as he could off the roof. "Bad Kot! Bad!" Kot's head swiveled to look at the arc of the bird's body, and Illya slapped Kot on the side of the head. "Bad! I don't want bird! Don't kill it for me!" 

Kot yowled and raked a claw across Illya's wrist. Illya pushed Kot away, and Kot latched onto his hand and began to bite. The more Illya tried to push Kot away, the more Kot fought. It kicked with its hind paws, sinking its teeth into the soft flesh of Illya's hands. 

Illya screamed and flung Kot against the wall. "Off! Off! Stop!" Kot tumbled to the roof. It rose, staggering, and then shot away over the rooftops. 

That was when Illya began to cry, an open-mouthed wail that sounded more like the siren of an ambulance than the gentle sobbing of his mother when his father had been dragged away in handcuffs. It seemed to come from somewhere so deep within him that he had no control over it, less an expression of sadness than the primal call of a wounded animal to its pack. 

The next thing he knew, his mother was standing over him in her nightgown and robe, a cigarette dangling from her lip. "What is the matter, Illya? Why are you making such a scene during my party?" 

Still wailing, Illya held out his mangled hand to his mother. She gasped, the cigarette falling from her lip. "Bozhe moi, Illyushka. What happened?" 

Dunyasha Kuryakina brought her little son inside and poured the dregs of a bottle of Stolichnaya on his hand and gave him a bottle of Pepsi-Cola to drink while he told her about Kot and the bird. She just shook her head and clucked her tongue as she used her favorite silk handkerchief to bandage his hand. "Silly, don't you know that stray cats will scratch? It is in their nature." 

Illya understands this about Napoleon Solo: He will drop dead birds into your lap. And he always seems to land on his feet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I die they're gonna bury me in Jersey,  
> I just know it man.  
> I'll be a cold-cocked bag of bones  
> weighed down with stones  
> and sunk in the swamps of Jersey.  
> There ain't know way I'm moving back there now.
> 
> "Never trust a man who don't drink," my papa told me  
> He said he was talking about me at the time  
> "The easy way out ain't no damn way out."  
> My pop would scold me, he said  
> "Hey, get back in the-"  
> \--"My Ancestral Homeland, New Jersey"

Gaby and Illya can be twins in a white T-shirt and blue jeans when Gaby teaches Illya to work on cars. She puts her hair up and ignores smears of oil across her cheeks and her arms, showing Illya how this hose connects to that tank, how engines with blank casings open up in secret places to reveal infinitely detailed workings. It's as calming as playing chess, to patiently fit and refit metal against metal, to prod and pry and screw and bend something that has no ability to regard him. 

"I see our little chop-shop girl is teaching you some useful skills," Napoleon says. 

They're in the auto bay of UNCLE, a gigantic underground garage that opens up into a greasy little storefront called Big Eduardo's Garage. Gaby's preferred method of stress relief is to wander down, exchange a few knowledgeable words with Fabian and Jorge who are usually there in mustard-yellow jumpsuits, and stick her head into a BMW luxury sedan or some kind of flashy Italian sportscar. 

Illya wipes his hands on his jeans and holds up his wrench, to demonstrate that he has been working. Then he sees the sparkle in Napoleon’s eye. Sometimes, he can’t quite tell whether Napoleon’s making some kind of double entendre, or just sounds smarmy. 

“I am learning to replace carburetors,” Illya says. 

“Then you can practice if we blow a gasket on the road to Las Vegas.” Napoleon holds up a sparkling set of keys, tosses them in the air, and catches them again. He’s dressed less formally than he usually is, in a black T-shirt, black jeans, and a black sportsjacket. His hair curls over his head, combed out like the wrong end of a duck. To Illya, he looks less like a suave art thief, and more like some American rock and roll singer--Elvis Presley, perhaps, or Link Wray, or Kickin’ Johnny Khaos. 

Illya panics. “Now?” He looks at Gaby, who’s as pretty without makeup as she is with it, but won’t pass muster anywhere but the poorest road-house in what she’s wearing. 

Gaby grins widely. “Are we taking a road trip?” she asks. 

“Vegas, baby.” Napoleon slips on a pair of dark sunglasses. “I have your fake IDs and your toothbrushes.” 

*

Gaby wants to travel in style, choosing the most top-of-the-line BMW the UNCLE garage carries--a car reserved for literal royalty. “It would stand out too much,” Napoleon says. “Wrong image.” Illya is very interested in an AMT Piranha, a sleek little prototype with a body like an eel, but there’s only room for two in there. Napoleon finally settles on a ridiculously flashy Impala, black and chrome with bright yellow highlights. 

Napoleon hands Illya a beat-up black leather jacket that fits Illya perfectly, snugly. Gaby gets a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses. “Part of your official secret identity,” he says. Illya gets to be John Crawford, Gaby gets to be Judy Wood, and Napoleon gets to be James Stark. 

They eat hamburgers. They drink Coca-Cola. Gaby buys a white scarf and a pair of cheap red high heel shoes and a new shirt and pretends that she is an American starlet, lolling in the backseat and chatting in an affected accent about her latest project. “It’s a very daring movie, very blue,” she says. “I only show one breast...but it’s the prettier one.” She takes Illya’s hand and places it delicately between her breast and her collarbone. “See?” 

Napoleon laughs. 

*

Gaby is asleep in the backseat, and Illya has been dozing as well. They’ve only stopped in a motel twice. Napoleon seems to be driving through the night, telling Gaby and Illya that they’ll stop and rest “at the next motel, we’re making good time, I’ll wake you two up when we get there,” only for Illya and Gaby to wake up and find that the morning is dawning and they are still on the road. 

He wakes up in the soft glow of a red neon light. They’ve stopped at a gas station, it seems. Napoleon is leaning against the car, fueling up the Impala. 

Illya rubs his eyes as Napoleon slides into the driver’s seat. “Napoleon, what is going on?” 

“I’d like to ask you the same thing,” Napoleon says, and jerks a thumb backwards towards Gaby. “I know you’re sweet on her, and I know for a fact she’s very taken with you. Now, I know you’re not hiding anything romantic from your pal Napoleon--” 

“Who says we are not?” Illya fires back. 

“Because,” Napoleon says in a low tone, “Gaby told me.” 

And that is how Illya discovers that Gaby and Napoleon have made it a point to have brunch together at least once a week at Napoleon’s apartment, with Napoleon cooking Gaby various American and Continental foods to introduce her to the palate of an international secret agent. (“She likes huevos rancheros,” Napoleon says, “Bloody Marys, cinnamon rolls, things like that. Flavorful.” He winks at Illya. 

“But she does not spend the night,” Illya says, haltingly, anger beginning to curl in his throat. 

The anger dissipates when Napoleon laughs and says, “Oh, no. We dress up for brunch, after all.”) 

“It’s a good way to get women to really talk to you,” Napoleon says. “I mean, really talk. They’re not thinking of seduction in the middle of the morning. Well...not most of them. I know you two spend plenty of time together--if you’re not trying to court her like a stunned schoolboy, then what are you two doing?” 

“Working on cars.” 

Napoleon doubles over with laughter. 

When he recovers, he explains. “The funny thing is, that’s almost the whole reason I’m here.” 

“Fixing cars?” 

“No--getting away from fixing cars.” 

It hadn’t been that he’d been the heir to a garage, as Illya had assumed. 

“No, I was the heir to a plastic cup company. Nothing really big--my old man was making enough money to send me to college somewhere really swell, like Yale. I was supposed to get a business degree, take over the company, and make it go big.” 

“And then you were drafted?” 

“I exaggerated my age a little and signed up before I ever graduated from high school.” 

It had been obvious to even a sixteen-year-old like Napoleon that the war was going to be over quickly, and yet he’d still signed up to get away from his destiny as a plastic cup maker in the stifling burg of Bridgewater, New Jersey. “I was helping one of my friends fix his car, as boys are wont to do at that age. I remember sitting in the garage with grease all over my hands, drinking a warm Schlitz, bored out of my skull. And then my dearest friend, this companion of my soul--he turns to me and he punches me in the stomach.” 

“For what?” Illya asks. 

“For fun.” Napoleon pops a black pill into his mouth and swallows it down with a swig of Coca-Cola. “I realized that I didn’t want the kind of friends who punched me in the stomach just to amuse themselves. I didn’t want to be best friends with someone I said nothing to. I didn’t want to spend my life trying to amuse myself in a stuffy garage and drinking the worst beer ever brewed.” 

“I find it hard to believe that a criminal like you would sign up to serve your country just to be a hero.” 

“Oh, no. I didn’t think I’d get shot--frankly, I was hoping they’d station me somewhere nice, like Paris.” Napoleon unwraps a candy car and bites off a chunk of it. “I didn’t want to be the most boring, meatheaded version of a man possible.” 

“You wanted ten-thousand-dollar star sapphire rings,” Illya says. “And you wanted truffles in your risotto.” 

“I wanted to talk to interesting women. Talk to interesting men. Fight with people for interesting reasons, if nothing else. I wanted to be the kind of man that could do that, the kind of man that should.” Napoleon takes another bite of the candy bar and makes a face. “And here I am eating a Hershey bar for breakfast in Texas anyway.” 

“So you think I am boring, fixing cars with Gaby?” Illya challenges him. 

“Only if you’re boring her.” Napoleon leans back in the driver’s seat. “You and Gaby aren’t boyfriend and girlfriend--you’re guy friends. Best friends. You work on cars together and you don’t talk about anything but cars.” He laughs. “Does Gaby ever punch you for no reason?” 

“No,” Illya says truthfully. “She has purpose--she wants to amuse herself.” When Gaby socks him in the shoulder or slaps him in the face, he chases her, and they end up roughhousing or taking mock punches at each other. It almost always turns into judo practice, and Illya somehow always manages to end up on his back. 

“Well, there you have it.” Solo yawns and closes his eyes. Not long afterwards, Illya hears the throaty rumble of the engine, feels the car moving out of the gas station. Napoleon is at the wheel, face pale where the red of the neon sign meets the light of the moon.


	3. One for the Witches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You could become very serious  
> But I don't think that you'd like it  
> 'Cause all this  
> It is pretty dangerous
> 
> So hey  
> Let's just laugh  
> And let's kiss  
> In spite of all this"   
> \--"One for the Witches"

"You know how to play blackjack, don't you, sweetie pie?" Napoleon asks with a terribly halfassed Elvis snarl. 

Gaby leans against him and giggles, putting her arm around his waist. "No, baby, but you can teach me!" 

Illya trails behind them, sullen and hunched over in his new beat-up leather jacket. They had spent nearly a day in the car arguing over which type of American accent it would be most advantageous for Illya to master. Gaby thought that a Brooklyn accent would be easiest to pick up, and Napoleon insisted that a Minnesota accent would be most believable. "Look at da guy--he's a real Minnesota moose." Gaby had laughed and punched his arm. 

The fact was that Illya was perfectly competent in nearly every major Russian accent except for Mongolian and three more languages besides, but America's patois had escaped him. Waverly had suggested that he settle down in one of the UNCLE-protected apartments above the block of the East 40s that the headquarters sat under. Napoleon had suggested Park Slope. Illya was thinking about Brighton Beach, but he wasn't sure, if he didn't even know how long he'd be there. 

If this was for good. 

Illya digs a quarter out of his pocket and pushes it into the nearest slot machine. If Napoleon and Gaby are playing a couple, Illya ought to look inconspicuous for a bit. Trail behind, be their hidden muscle. For his attempt to blend in, he is rewarded by a handful of coins and a flashing light, which he immediately deposits on the tray of the nearest cocktail waitress. 

"Hey," says the cocktail waitress. She gives him a bright smile, all cherry-red lips and blue eyeshadow. "Thanks, mister. What can I get you?" 

"Nothing," Illya says. "Just enjoy." 

"Gee, I sure will." She puts her hand on her hip and gives him a look up and down, and then she's off, carrying her tray high above her head. 

Illya scans the crowd. Gaby and Napoleon are strolling ahead casually, Gaby's hips swaying from side to side on those red pumps. They stop at a blackjack table, and Napoleon slides a crisp twenty onto the table and bends his head into Gaby's. He's gesturing at the cards. Probably teaching her how to cheat, Illya thinks. He can't muster up much outrage for Napoleon's criminal streak up against a casino. He watches them play a hand. He wonders if Napoleon has been teaching Gaby how to play cards, how to pick locks, how to drink Scotch like a lady. Perhaps they should be talking more, he thinks. Gaby had mentioned wanting to learn Russian, and he should offer to teach her. That's certainly a way to talk. 

After a moment, they break away again, and that's when Napoleon's attention is diverted. He stares for a moment and then leans over to whisper to Gaby. Gaby whirls around almost immediately and comes back to Illya. 

"Change of plan. I'm having an affair with my boyfriend's best friend," she says. "And pretty obviously, too." 

Illya puts his arm protectively around her waist, and Gaby slides her sunglasses over her eyes. She leans into Illya's body and presses a kiss to his neck. The kiss turns into something lascivious, something that involves Gaby's tongue sliding across his skin, and then she's trotting off across the lobby to the bar. 

*

"I don't have to coach you on how to act like a jealous boyfriend, do I?" Gaby asks, once they've secured their room. It's not bugged, although Illya didn't think it would be--but it never hurts to look. He rarely keeps more than a change of socks and underclothes in the rooms they stay in, but Gaby seems to luxuriate in unpacking, lining up the cheap makeup she's been experimenting with on the rim of the sink and depositing lacy underwear in appropriate places. 

"I think I can manage," Illya says, half-joking. He pulls back the covers on the bed, looks under the mattress. "I am jealous moose from Minnesota, it should be easy." He thinks about how he should act towards Napoleon--outright anger won't do. He'll have to be the beta wolf, outwardly friendly but passively seething. A sidekick, third wheel. 

"Just don't punch him too hard, if you do. He's got a very useful face the way it is." Gaby starts to brush her hair in the bathroom mirror, running water over the brush and then applying it to her head. "It's so hot out here." 

"It was much hotter in Istanbul, I think," says Illya. He sticks his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and joins Gaby in the bathroom. The sound of the running tap will muffle anything he missed. "What is the situation?" 

"Oh, Napoleon thinks it'll be useful to make some girl he used to know jealous," Gaby says. "He thinks she works for the casino. I didn't get anything else out of him." 

Illya frowns and thinks of the cocktail waitress. He wonders what kind of women Napoleon might know, might have used to know. "Our target. The affair we will be on, as it is." 

Gaby stops brushing her hair. "You didn't read the dossier?" 

"The dossier was given to Napoleon," Illya says. "It was in a bag by your feet all the way here. You would have had a chance to read it--there was no time when I did, seeing as how you and the Cowboy alternated shifts without stopping for a moment." 

"We both like driving." Gaby shrugs. "Anyway, you could have just read it." 

"It was given to Napoleon." 

"Only because it's his area of expertise." Gaby scowls. "It's for all of us." She leaves the bathroom, rummages through Napoleon's suitcase, and fishes out the slim manila folder. 

Illya sits on the bed and reads. It's thin on information. Known THRUSH executives have been spotted betting and losing huge sums there without any apparent consequences for the operatives or the casino, which suggests money laundering--something to keep an eye on, to be sure, but hardly the kind of world-threatening mission that the trio was usually sent on. 

"Let me guess," Illya says. "They are buying and selling Nazi-looted art, and Mr. Solo must reconnect with his thief friends to get on the inside." 

Gaby shakes her head. "It's a meeting place--for Napoleon. Specifically." 

Illya rechecks the dossier. It's a two-page fact sheet on the casino, and that's it. No objective, no contacts, nothing. 

"I am beginning to think that we are not here on a strictly official mission," Illya says. 

Gaby shrugs. "I thought it might be reconnaissance." 

"Reconnaissance-only missions are..." Not for the likes of us, he was going to say, but he keeps forgetting that Gaby is the least experienced agent. True, she's been with UNCLE longer and received the same UNCLE training, but she's the only one of them who isn't a veteran of some other agency. Perhaps this is meant to be a milk run, after all. "Easy. You go, you watch, and if you are spotted you leave without a fight." 

"That doesn't sound like fun." 

"It can be good when you have gone on five assignments in a row where you are required to fight seven men and a large dog at the same time." 

"A large dog, hm?" 

"Well, medium. But was very fierce." 

"Illya, don't tell me you had to fight a Daschsund." 

"No, only thing that short I have ever had to fight is you." 

"Hey!" Gaby flicks him on the side of the head, in passing. In response, he slaps her wrist away. She retaliates with a palm strike to the side of the head, and within moments they're tussling on the bed, rolling over and over. Illya finally pins her, and Gaby yelps and pokes him in the ribs. "Just because I'm short and German!" 

"Short enough--" 

And then Gaby lifts her head and kisses him. It's a quick, soft kiss, but it's far from platonic. He feels the brief touch of her wet tongue pressing against his lips, and then it's over. "Short enough for what?" she asks innocently. 

Illya shakes his head. "I don't think this is a good idea." 

"Oh." Gaby seems to slump under him, even in her proneness. "I see." She reaches up, dislodging his grip on her arm easily, and strokes back the blonde hair that's falling over his forehead from lack of tending. "It could be dangerous, couldn't it. With what we're doing-- 

"We should stop," he says. "James will find out." 

Gaby grins. "James will never know." And then she kisses him again, mouth wet and open.


	4. Your Younger Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Everyone said it would end badly  
> It took a while, but it did  
> And I hung my head sadly  
> And I got used to it  
> I'll see you at some funeral  
> I've got a few in mind  
> We'll be fighting but I'll be smiling  
> Because I'll remember the time
> 
> When I saw your face I thought, ten years is such a long time  
> Well I'm older now than you were then  
> When I, when I
> 
> When I saw your face and thought, ten years ain't such a long time...  
> Well I'm older now than you were then  
> When I was your younger man"   
> \--"Your Younger Man"

The war had ended. Napoleon sat at a bar, too young to drink or appreciate the dark red wine he was drinking, and he tried to think of it in manly terms. Manly thoughts, simple and direct, thoughts of collision and color like Hemingway. The war had ended, and the men that he fought with were going home. They were going back to wives and lovers, women they had kissed and women they wanted to kiss someday. They were going home to good, solid jobs in garages and factories, in farm fields and grocery shops. 

All of the women that Napoleon wanted to kiss were in France. He was glad to be in France, glad because French women loved his name and because he loved the names of French women. Jeanette was far more delicate than Jean, Marie more sophisticated than Mary, Aimee more fanciful than Amy. The girls' names back home wore gingham, the women here seemed to be wearing black lace under all their torn Resistance rags. 

Still, there was the fact of the war ending. Napoleon had to worry. He had only been in France for six months, shipped out on Christmas Eve as a present to himself from his family--not that they knew about it. The end of the war had been exhausting, with little time to check papers or confirm backgrounds, and he had managed to slip through the cracks somehow--but with the over, demobilization would begin quickly, and he would be scooped up and shipped back to New Jersey with the rest of the boys too young to protest. 

"Have a light, soldier?" The blonde woman who'd slid onto the booth beside him was a vision, something out of a Bogart movie. She smiled, but it did something dangerous to her eyes. 

Napoleon slid his Zippo lighter out of his sleeve and held it up to her cigarette. The French girls seemed to like that one as much as Clara, back in Bridgewater, had hated it. "Celebrating the end of it all?" 

"Something like that." The woman dangled her cigarette between her lips. "I suppose you boys are eager to get back home." 

"And leave France? The thought terrifies me." 

"Ah, you like France?" 

"I like the wine, the cheese, and especially the women. They're the most beautiful in the world." That line usually got a knowing smile, but the blonde just sneered. 

"All men like the French." 

"But it takes a connoisseur to truly appreciate the Swiss," Napoleon added. He'd guessed right. The woman let one corner of her mouth curl up in a smile. 

"An American who has taste. Quite rare." She knocked some ash off onto the floor. "So you'd like to stay in France? I, too, would like to stay in France. They know how to live." 

It was raining when they left, leaning against each other, staggering a little. Angelique--that was her name, and there was nothing like it in English--opened her black umbrella and kissed Napoleon on the mouth, then leaned into his arms and laughed. 

"You will keep me safe from the brutes, won't you? I do so fear the men who'd take revenge against a poor girl like me." 

"Of course," Napoleon said. "Chivalry is not yet dead, my dear." 

"I don't need chivalry," said Angelique. "But I do need someone clever on my side." 

The "poor girl" was only nineteen, and had--according to her story--absolutely no idea that her dear Uncle Hans from Austria had been profiting off the art he seized from the Juden he'd rooted out for the Nazi state. "He was only doing his job, like anyone else in this war. He wasn't really a Nazi, you know, just a man who wanted to be good at what he did." 

"Of course," Napoleon agreed, feeling no sympathy for bloodthirsty Uncle Hans, but all the sympathy in the world for a lovely blonde girl about to lose her earthly possessions. 

He learned the best way to wrap up priceless works of art and stack them under bags of coffee, then to spread a layer of potato sacks on top of the coffee beans to allay suspicion (and because, if caught, coffee smugglers were often let go with a coffee toll rather than searched thoroughly and arrested), and to ride over the border as though he had every right to be there. He learned how to fake being lost and how to flirt in four different languages. 

It was also easy to learn about the art itself. Angelique's uncle's friends were cultured men with intelligent opinions about art, wine, and literature. Some of them were tight-lipped, but some of them were quite boastful about their prize Rembrandt or Vermeer and how the light might strike it as it filtered through the windows of their Argentinian villa. Napoleon took mental notes. 

* 

"Darling!" Angelique comes towards him with open arms, swathed in black Chanel. Well, he thinks, that's his cover blown. She kisses him on each cheek, running her black-gloved fingers down his arms. "It's such a pleasure to see you--but I thought you swore never to step foot in America again." 

"Ah, but any country where you are--" He cuts himself off to lift her hand to his lips. 

"Well, I must go where the beautiful things are." 

"And so must I, it seems." 

"Indeed." She holds his eyes, as grey and soft as the day they first met. Angelique is a hard woman, he knows, but she never lets it show. "I've truly missed you, Napoleon." 

"There isn't a day that goes by that I haven't thought about you." It's true, too. Wondering just how old she really was. Wondering just how much she had been involved with the Nazis. Hell, even wondering if Uncle Hans had really been her uncle. 

Wondering if she was the one who had finally turned him in, sold him out for some kind of mercy the way her Uncle Hands had sold out his own country for a hope of mercy. Wondering if she was even more screwed than she was, working for some spy agency that had picked her up and given her even a rawer deal. 

Wondering if she'd ever really bothered to love him. 

There had been a point, when he was dangling some kind of allegorical alligator trap set by the CIA once again, that he'd decided he had never loved her. Angelique had been infatuation, the desire of a man for a kind of lifestyle and opportunity he'd glimpsed briefly, in movies. She was someone who'd taught him how to refine his cunning into a way of life, how to pick up an accent and divert a conversation. She'd shown him what he could be, and that was what he loved about her. 

Her lips curve into that one-sided smile he's kissed a thousand times, and he realizes that he's going to revisit that decision almost immediately. "Then let's catch up."

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr me](http://kleenexwoman.tumblr.com/)


End file.
